Klein, Sartre and Imagination in the Films of Ingmar Bergman

Klein, Sartre and Imagination in the Films of Ingmar Bergman

Dan Williams

Language: English

Pages: 243

ISBN: 1349564745

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub

This book explores connections between the diverse ideas of Melanie Klein, Jean-Paul Sartre and Ingmar Bergman. These ideas are explored in relation to their shared focus on imagination and through detailed readings of a number of Bergman's key films.
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
1 The Imagination: Bergman, Klein and Sartre
2 From Freud to Klein, and Wild Strawberries
3 Sartre’s Theory of Imagination and The Seventh Seal
4 From Three Early Bergman Films to an Analysis of Summer with Monika
5 Revenge and Reparation in The Virgin Spring
6 The Destruction of the Artist: Hour of the Wolf
7 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
Index

interrogate their own lives and histories, a classic example being the ruminations of Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries. This concern with reflection and depth relates to a broader historical context and position. All three individuals were significantly influenced by the horror of World War II, the questioning and reflection in the post-war aftermath and the constructive optimism of the post-war rebuilding. The Imagination: Bergman, Klein and Sartre 27 A sense of critical engagement with

case of Bergman, this does not lead to an obvious ideological position. Of relevance here is Jörn Donner’s argument that Bergman’s work responds to a society, Sweden, that was extremely advanced in terms of economic security, and thus even more vulnerable to issues concerning the ‘inner life’.96 In this sense, Bergman’s work confronts a loss of ideology. Nevertheless, even if this context prevails across Bergman’s work we also find issues of equality and disempowerment. Some of Bergman’s early

fixed states.48 For Sartre, emotions are bound up with consciousness and as such reveal the intentions of subjects in relation to reality. This view is repeated in Being and Nothingness when Sartre states: the empirical psychologist, while defining man by his desires, remains the victim of the illusion of substance. He views desire as being in man by virtue of being ‘contained’ by his consciousness, and he believes that the meaning of the desire is inherent in the desire itself. Thus he avoids

And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion – neither consenting nor resisting – a thing.52 This example shows how bad faith involves refusing the possibility of choice, such that the body, or in this case a part of the body, appears to signify a final decision which has not actually been made. The hand becomes object-like because it fails to represent the uncertainty and continuing evolution of the

sexual relationship. The dialogue reaches beyond what we know, providing fragmentary details of Veronica’s fears that antagonistic characters have watched her (or them) and are writing to her in a threatening way. Veronica is a good object for Johan, as her arrival overcomes his anxiety about his work, but the affair also signifies trouble through the references to an external threat and her bruise. The effect of the fragmentation is to provoke an imaginative interpretation from the audience, and